See how he stands so easily and lightly despite his knapsacks and uniform, steadying his gun as it leans upright beside him. His hat sits at a slight angle on his head and I can see the veins in his hand, which is hanging loosely by his side. I can see the ironed crease of his trousers. He looks relaxed, but more than that, his smile is cheeky and jovial, as if he’s having a great time.
He is an Aboriginal soldier and the black and white photo was taken in November 1941 at Darling Harbour as he and his best mate George Leonard were waiting for the ferry to take them to their transport ship headed to the Middle East. His name is Private Harold West of the 2/1st Battalion. The photo is so evocative it feels like you were there too, rather than being a photo from almost three quarters of a century ago.
His name was, not is, Harold West, and he only lived one more year after the photo was taken. Both Harold and his friend died during the war and both are buried in Port Moresby. It seems hardly credible that such a larrikin-looking fellow was to face the horrors that he no doubt experienced, and that he would die so young.
I attended the dawn service this year: the first time I have ever attended any sort of Anzac Day event. I rode my bike down to the service at the National War Memorial, at 4.15am I’d say from their lights that around one in 10 households that I passed were awake. Traffic was light, then more concentrated, until a few blocks away all the lanes were full of cars, and a thick stream of people were heading towards the War Memorial on foot, most well rugged up against the Canberra cold. Babies in prams, young children, parents, school groups in uniform and older people were all there in the dark. A crowd they estimated at 120,000 coming to respect and listen to the stories. Stories of love and waste, deprivation and suffering, loss and courage, selflessness and the random dance of death that surrounded the soldiers at Gallipoli in World War One; Europe, North Africa, and the South West Pacific in World War Two; and the battlefields in Vietnam, Korea, Malaya, Borneo, Iraq and Afghanistan.
We have come a long way as a nation. The dawn service commenced with the rich, earthy sound of the didgeridoo being played, and after the service, the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Anzac Day commemoration ceremony honoured the contributions of our first nation people, who were not even permitted to represent Australia until the Second World War – but many did anyway.
The service also reflected an honest appraisal of Anzac Day and what a failure Gallipoli was. The soldiers’ letters which were read out prior to the dawn service concluded with one from a participating soldier who wrote that Gallipoli had been a disaster from which nothing good had come, and was a total waste of resources and men’s lives. This was echoed by our Prime Minister in his speech at Gallipoli, subsequently broadcasted.
Why then do we and why should we mark the occasion? To honour courage, or mateship, or sacrifices? To remember?
It’s not just the tens of thousands dead at Gallipoli – or any subsequent war – that matters, although that is terrible enough, when you consider the enormity of losing each individual life. It’s not just the suffering or horror, or the fact that these men were robbed of their futures. It’s also the ripple effect this had on their families and loved ones, and, as Captain Peter Friend put it in the dedication, ‘those left behind to bear the sorrow of their loss.’ Just as significantly, it’s important to remember the survivors, who were permanently maimed or scarred by what they had lived through.
In their own words:
An Australian digger approached the front trench. To the men in it he called: ‘Jim here?’ A voice rose from the fire step. ‘Yeah, right here Bill.’ ‘Do you chaps mind moving’ up a piece?,’ asked the first voice. ‘Him and me are mates – and we’re goin’ over together.’
You, the mothers who sent their sons from faraway countries, wipe away your tears; your sons are now lying in our bosom and are in peace. After having lost their lives on this land they have become our sons as well.
I wish to protest against the endeavour to have Anzac Day proclaimed a public holiday, for a holiday simply means race meetings, picnics, jazzing etcetera. The day is too sacred to the relatives and friends of the dear lads who fell for any holiday joymaking.
The writer of the above got her wish a century later. For some of us at least, Anzac Day wasn’t marked by a public holiday this year. But not because the Anzacs have been forgotten.
Sources:
- Incident recorded by official historian Charles Bean just before the battle at Lone Pine, in which 2,300 Australian casualties were recorded and seven Victoria Crosses awarded, quoted in Anzac Day 2015: 100th Anniversary of the Gallipoli Landings.
- Atatürk’s 1934 tribute to the Anzacs killed at Gallipoli, which appears on the Kemal Atatürk Memorial, Anzac Parade, Canberra.
- Letter to the Sydney Morning Herald, c. 1919, from Edith Glandville, who had lost her son Leigh At Gallipoli, quoted in the documentary Why Anzac? with Sam Neill, broadcast on 21 April 2015, ABC TV.
- Photo of Private Harold West, AWM image 010375.
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